N.F.L. Makes Open-Ended Commitment to Retirees in Concussion Suit

Former Chicago quarterback Jim McMahon is among the retired players suing the N.F.L. over concussions.CreditCreditPablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

The N.F.L. has made an open-ended commitment to pay cash awards to retired players who have dementia and other conditions linked to repeated head hits, according to documents filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

In August, the league agreed to pay $765 million to settle the suit with the retired players, with $675 million of that amount set aside for cash awards. But Judge Anita B. Brody rejected the proposal in January because she said she doubted whether there would be enough money to cover all the claims over the 65-year life of the settlement.

Lawyers for the league and the plaintiffs spent the past six months revising the settlement. If the judge approves the new version in the coming weeks, it will be sent to all 18,000 retired players and their beneficiaries, who can then approve the settlement, object or opt out of it. The results of that vote are unlikely to be known for at least several months, and no players will be paid until all appeals are exhausted.

The league’s new promise to compensate all qualified claims could convince retirees who said they would opt out of the original settlement because they felt the league could have set aside more money for players with serious neurological disorders.

“Today’s agreement reaffirms the N.F.L.’s commitment to provide help to those retired players and their families who are in need and to do so without the delay, expense and emotional cost associated with protracted litigation,” said Anastasia Danias, a senior vice president and the chief litigation officer of the N.F.L.

Lawyers for the retirees, many of whom have worked on a contingency basis, have also been eager to settle the case so they can be paid. They have argued against opting out of the settlement because suing the league again would be a daunting and expensive task.

In a statement, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyers, Christopher Seeger and Sol Weiss, said, “This settlement guarantees that these benefits will be there if needed and does so without years of litigation that may have left many retired players without any recourse.”

Seeger added in an interview that “there was a perception out there that there wasn’t enough money” in the settlement, so “there was no better way to assure them” than removing the cap on awards.

The requirements to qualify for cash awards, which are based on the number of years a player was in the N.F.L. and his age at the time he developed dementia or another neurological disorder, will not change. In general, younger retired players who develop a condition will be eligible for more than older retirees, and players who played for five or more years will receive more than those with less time.

The league, however, insisted on measures to prevent retired players from filing false claims. The standards for the doctors who will be eligible to diagnose conditions have been tightened in the new proposal, and a network of approved doctors will be created.

The N.F.L. will also be able to appeal an unlimited number of claims, as opposed to 10 a year in the previous agreement.

Skeptics contend that the eligibility requirements are so narrow that the league’s offer to remove the cap on cash awards is irrelevant. Those suspicions will lead some players to scrutinize the proposal further.

“The question is how many hoops you have to jump through,” said Joe DeLamielleure, who played for 13 years with the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns.

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Judge Anita B. Brody is presiding over the retired players' lawsuit against the N.F.L.CreditUncredited/U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, via Associated Press

“Basically, if you have C.T.E., the only way you’ll ever get any relief for your family is you have to die,” DeLamielleure added, referring to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease.

Removing the cap is “obviously a big change,” said Ted Frank, the president of the Center for Class Action Fairness. “The real question,” he added, “is whether it is just one set of changes or whether there is a second set of changes where the N.F.L. gives with one hand and makes the restrictions tougher and takes away with the other hand.”

Legal experts said that the new N.F.L. settlement could provide a blueprint for other concussion cases, including those brought by former players against the N.H.L.

The experts said they expected more former N.F.L. players to drop their objections to the proposed settlement if only because the likelihood of winning a larger award was diminished.

“There is going to be folks who want to opt out, but once the judge approves it, the threshold for getting it reversed is so high that contesting it further doesn’t really make sense,” said Michael LeRoy, who teaches law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “The bottom line is, you can’t get everything you want.”

As in the original agreement, the league will set aside $75 million for base-line testing of retirees and $10 million for concussion education. But a provision in the original agreement that would have prevented players who received cash payouts from suing the N.C.A.A. “or any other collegiate, amateur or youth football organization” has been removed from the new proposed settlement.

The revised plan took about six months to complete partly because all 32 team owners of the N.F.L. had to consider the merits and risks of making an open-ended commitment to fund cash awards. The league wanted to ensure that a revised settlement would be approved by the retirees and stand up under scrutiny if the settlement was appealed.

The league has been eager to complete a deal. Since the original agreement was announced, the league has been dogged by suspicions that the owners could have paid much more to settle the case. In that agreement, the owners had to pay half of the settlement in the first three years and the rest during the following 17 years, or a few million dollars per team per year.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the N.F.L. hired actuaries and medical experts, who determined that $765 million was adequate. But they refused to share any of their data with the public, which fueled speculation further.

An analysis by The New York Times suggested that the skeptics had a point. Given how many of the 13,500 currently retired players could develop severe neurological disorders over the next 65 years, the cost could be closer to $1 billion, if not more.

While prominent retired players have been voicing their skepticism about the settlement and the intentions of N.F.L. owners, the league has tried to change the tenor of the debate over concussions in football by donating tens of millions of dollars to hospitals and research and education programs.

By removing the biggest objection to the initial settlement, the N.F.L. may be able to shift the focus away from the litigation over its past behavior.

“They can’t undo past harm, but they are agreeing to an uncapped fund that will compensate anyone with a neurocognitive disorder,” LeRoy, of the University of Illinois, said. “The N.F.L. for many years has been portrayed as walking away from retired players. Now they may be viewed as walking side by side with them.”

Even with the league’s new open-ended commitment, some players may continue to question the settlement, which does not require the league to admit any fault and does not require players to prove that their illnesses are a direct result of concussions received during their time in the N.F.L.

Some retired players may grumble that the lead plaintiffs’ lawyers continue to request $112 million in legal fees. Seeger said the plaintiffs’ lawyers would not apply for those fees until retired players could be paid.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B16 of the New York edition with the headline: N.F.L. Revises Settlement, Making Open-Ended Pledge. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe